


Saint Valentine's Day

by Raindropsonwhiskers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Gore, Broken Bones, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Codependency, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Don't Try This At Home, Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Heart transplants, Hearts, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Procedures, Organ Transplantation, Other, Pain, Possessive Behavior, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, and probably some, but in a loving way, for a very broad definition of loving, not smut(despite the previous tag), very very bad impromptu surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26807164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers
Summary: Time Lords have two hearts for a reason, surely. One for themselves, and one for someone they can't live without.Or, Missy takes the idea of giving someone your heart a little too literally.Or, why regenerating with another person's heart in your chest is a bad idea.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 15
Kudos: 41





	Saint Valentine's Day

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all in one day and it did not go the way I planned it to. So. Uh. Whoops. Please don't judge me, I think Whumptober got me in the mood to write dark fic.
> 
> Please read the tags, because this one is a whopper.

"Have you thought about our hearts?"

It's the middle of the night - though it often is, if the Doctor is in the Vault - and Missy has her stocking-clad feet up on his lap, ostensibly reading a novel but more honestly being a nuisance. The Doctor is, regardless, making an admirable effort at filling out tax forms, because Nardole insisted that such things were important now that he's living full-time on Earth.

He shakes his head, and Missy hums like she'd expected a better answer. She's in one of her more mercurial moods, slipping and sliding from sincerity to whimsical nonsense with dizzying ease. A soft thump indicates that she's closed her book and set it aside.

"You should," she says, sitting up properly and pulling her feet off his legs.

The phrasing of it is casually possessive enough to concern him slightly. "Our" hearts - not just his or hers. Both sets, both Time Lords, both of them. She's always been... grabby, to say the least, but this is new.

"Are you going somewhere with this?" he asks, glancing at her.

"Oh, just a few inches below your skin, a little past your left ribs," she replies. He can't quite tell if she's serious.

"No, Missy," he says firmly, just in case she is.

Her mouth falls into a pout. "But I've been so good. And it's nearly Valentine's Day, you know."

He doesn't point out that the day is named after a martyr, and she doesn't say that she already knew that. There's a lot of things that neither of them say aloud.

"I'm not letting you remove my hearts." The Doctor finally gives up on the paperwork and sets it aside. "You don't celebrate human holidays anyway."

A sigh, as though he's being deliberately thick and not just reasonable, falls from her lips. "I'd give you one back, silly."

Again with the clever phrasing - _one,_ not specifically his. He raises his eyebrows.

"And whose heart would you be giving me?"

"Mine, of course." Missy smiles at him, with an innocence far too deliberate to be genuine. "It's only fair. You've been very big on fairness. I'll take one of yours, and you can have one of mine."

The worst thing is, he thinks she means it. Her innocent facade is just that, but the intent lurking beneath it is raw and true. He can only guess at her motivations; or rather, he knows exactly what her logic is, and he wishes it didn't make so much sense.

He wants her to be his kind of good, thus he wants her to be like him, so if she takes one of his hearts, she's one step closer. It's proof that she's trying, in her own bizarre way. And it could work, medically speaking. Time Lords don't have blood types the same way humans do, they're both healthy, and there's dozens of places that would perform such a procedure with very few questions asked.

And therein lies the issue. It wouldn't be difficult to say yes, technically; it might even help Missy, a sugar pill for morality to help nudge her in the right direction. For the Doctor, it would be... compromising. An admittance of defeat, of a sort. Giving in and acknowledging what they've both long known to be true - he is hers, she is his, and neither of them have ever been anything else.

Both of his traitorous hearts warm at the idea. They would fit so snugly next to one of hers, one of each in both their chests, safe and synchronous. Time Lords have two for a reason, surely; one to keep, and the other to give away to an other half. Not exactly a new concept, though such ideas were always buried in the depths of more frowned-upon philosophy, painful tragedies, and lurid, passionate romances on Gallifrey. It's the sort of thing they had whispered between them when they were both young and thought they meant it.

"No." He shakes his head and doesn't meet her eyes. "Missy, that's a bad idea." 

"Why?"

Making the mistake of glancing up, he finds himself caught in her icy gaze. She's definitely serious, then.

"You know why," he sighs. It's got all sorts of consequences, and who knows what would happen if they regenerated like that; not to mention-

"Oh, of course," she says, bitterness filling her tone in an instant. "Wouldn't want you getting _corrupted,_ now would we?"

"That's not what I-"

Missy stands, flattens her skirts as if they've offended her, and walks out of the main chamber, toward her bedroom. She doesn't even say goodnight, which the Doctor had grown accustomed to. It stings sharper than he thought it would, and he hates it.

He sits in his chair for a few more minutes, wracked with indecision and more guilt than he would ever admit to. Perhaps he was a bit harsh.

A few weeks later, when Valentine's Day rolls around in a mess of pink and red and sticky silver glitter, the Doctor brings Missy a small card shaped like an anatomically correct Time Lord heart, and tells her that if they make it one hundred years like this, he'll consider it. She lights up like a dying star gone supernova and strokes one hand down the left side of his chest, fingers curling into the fabric just above his heart in a promise.

After the Monks, he begins making plans. Nothing concrete, but a little research into various hospitals when he has the time. After Mars, he picks a specific one and makes an appointment for the operation; she's been making so much progress lately, after all, and positive reinforcement is important.

Nardole and Bill don't know. Not that it's any of their business in the first place. That's the justification the Doctor settles on, rather than investigate exactly _why_ he doesn't want them finding out. They wouldn't understand if they did. For as open-minded as Bill is - for a human - she would worry about him, and that's the last thing he needs. If it is a bad choice, and _oh_ it almost certainly is, then it is his to make, and his to not explain.

His relationship with Missy, the Master, Koschei, any variety of the names they've gone by over their lives is hard to put into words. How to explain infinity in a language built for the temporary? How to explain that it isn't some capitulation on his part to placate her, but the realization of a truth the universe put together wrong? Better not to try, in this case.

He waits until Valentine's Day to tell her the plan. Poetic, he thinks; romantic, even.

"Sappy," she informs him, but there's a fondness, a hunger, in her eyes that tells him she doesn't really mind.

The hospital is on a backwater planet mostly occupied by people evading the law or getting less-than-medically advised operations. None of the staff even raise an eyebrow-equivalent at seeing the last two known Time Lords in the universe.

It's over quickly, no complications or troubles. The Doctor almost feels like nothing's changed, except for the matching lines of stitches he and Missy share down one side of their torsos. Her heart fits so neatly next to his, just as he'd thought it would; better than his own did, even. Maybe they were always meant to be like this, a small piece of the other tucked away and safe with them.

Not for the first time since the Vault, though it still feels novel, they fall asleep next to each other. Missy wraps herself around him like an octopus despite the stitches and listens to the beat of their hearts, and the Doctor pretends he isn't doing the same. When he finally falls asleep, it's to her hearts, even now beating in tandem.

A colony ship orbiting a black hole is a hell of a place to die. He begs her to stay, to stand with him, to make the right choice. She turns him down, leaves with her past self, and the Doctor dies remembering why so many stories of this sort of thing were tragedies. He feels the hearts in his chest stutter to their final beats, and wonders how Missy will fare. Will hers keep going, and both of his fade away? Will she be able to feel it when he dies? Will she even care if she does?

The Doctor doesn't like her new set of hearts, she discovers. They always feel just a beat out of sync, just a millisecond off from the old rhythm. She checks, several times, to see if there's anything _wrong_ with them. There isn't, beyond her own perception.

It never makes any sort of difference, really. Just like how the kidneys last time had been the wrong color, her hearts are a little off. Simple as that.

Except. Except she knows it isn't, when she's alone and tired enough to let herself reminisce. It can't be a coincidence, that after the colony ship, after Missy's promise-slash-threat-slash-proffered gift-slash-show of love, that her hearts feel wrong. Not meant to be an identical set, not anymore, always looking for that other half so that they can be truly whole. As though that's going to happen. As though she wants it to.

Seeing O again makes her hearts do somersaults, and she chalks it up to excitement and adrenaline. The urge to be closer to him - close enough to touch, to feel his single heart beat beneath his skin - is an outlier that she strongly disregards. A relic of knowing him longer than most other people she's met since she regenerated. Nothing more.

When the Master reveals himself on the plane, eyes bright with joy and grinning like a child on Christmas, the Doctor feels her hearts _tug_ toward him. The feeling sends a sick twist down her throat to settle into her stomach; disgusted at herself for even momentary relief at his presence, though with O it was more than momentary.

She pushes her way frantically past him to the cockpit and adamantly does not burrow under his skin, tear one of his hearts out, or press it past her own ribcage in exchange for her own like a deep part of her hindbrain is aching to do. If she tries, she can pretend the urge stops at step two and that it's based solely on the fury bubbling under a thin layer of fear for her companions. That no part of it belongs to the longing, painful emptiness Missy left her with, because she is through letting herself be hurt by the Master.

Being tossed into another dimension almost comes as a relief. No more of that repulsive yearning to touch someone she knows will only use it against her, just the thrill of a mystery and enough adrenaline to let her ignore the off-kilter beat of her hearts. Ada not-yet-Lovelace serves as a good distraction as well; an excuse to hide behind the mask of friendliness she pulls up so easily this time and avoid anything more sincere.

Then the Master crashes the exhibition, and she knows a split second before he enters because her damnable hearts pick up for no reason but his mere proximity. They want to be with him, and she hates it more than she could put into any words. He stands close to her, close enough to touch, and her hands tremble with the effort of not doing so. He kneels opposite her, and she bares her teeth to mask that what she wants to do with them is something far more violent than tearing his throat out.

She wants to rip him apart, on some level, take back the pieces of her that she gave him not so long ago, and shove all of the bits of him back in their place. They'd traded more than hearts during their last span of time together, she knows; the anger burning under her skin shouldn't be hers, and that softness in his eyes is not rightfully his. Too tangled up in each other when they regenerated, that was the issue, and look at them now. Unsure whether to try to become separate beings again, as much as they can be, or to put the hearts they'd given each other back where they belong.

Perhaps it had been taboo on Gallifrey for a reason, perhaps the aftermath was too much for anyone to handle. The tragedies had spoken of heartsickness, and she had always assumed it meant a more metaphorical kind. Now she knows better - it is oh so literal, an insatiable hunger to have back what was once hers and now wrongly resides in his chest, driving her mad. They were both already mad long before they shared hearts, though. Maybe that's the only reason they did at all; any other person would have known it to be insane, and they would have been right.

"Have you thought about our hearts?" she asks him, after he's pulled her through a horrible looking glass portal to their dead homeworld, after he traps her in a prison of light and energy and her own stupidity.

The Master grimaces at his old words, just enough that she can see it. If he were playing his part properly in this conversation, he would shake his head; instead, he laughs. She can tell it's forced, but if that's how he wants to reply, she's not going to stop him.

"You know, Doctor, I have," he says. "Quite a lot, really. I want to tear them out and put them back in the right way, except there isn't a right way, is there? Because either way, it ends with both of us dead and it never _lasts._ Isn't that infuriating?"

He grins, ghoulish and horrible, and it doesn't quite hide the sadness still lurking in his eyes. Another time, another body, a less broken pair of hearts, she might have tried to comfort him. Now, she just sneers and hopes that, whatever all this is about, he gets it over with.

Their metaphysical projections stand facing each other on a hilltop, and the Doctor is still reeling as the Master talks. He's lying, he must be. There's no way he can be telling the truth, and yet… he seems earnest, truthful, genuine. So had O.

At least without the physical proximity, her hearts aren't betraying her. She can focus on her rage without the distracting urge to claw his ribs apart in search of his hearts, the awful hunger eating her up from the inside out. It makes it easier to become absolutely _furious_ when he says, "You can see why I'm angry. A little piece of you is in me. All I am is because of you, and believe me when I say I cannot _bear_ that."

He does not get to be angry about that, not after he was the one who suggested it in the first place. He doesn't get to feel the same regret as she does every painful, dragging second of the day.

"You started that," she hisses. "You were the one who brought it up, remember? Valentine's Day. _You_ did this to us both, you broke us."

The Master stops, finally stops for the first time. His eyes meet hers, and even though they're darker and sadder than Missy's they're just as captivating. Trapped, hypnotized, she stares back.

"No, Doctor," he says softly. "That had happened a long time ago."

She snarls and shoves him to the ground for being right, for daring to have at least a kernel of truth among everything else he's said to her. Even without the physical pull, a part of her wants to find out what his blood tastes like fresh from the source. He grins up at her even as he stays sprawled on the grass, and she doesn't think she's ever hated him more than in this moment.

The Master is practically knelt at her feet, begging for her to kill them both, no matter what she chooses. Death by Cyberman bomb will be quicker, but the separation from each other if he conquers the universe will leave both of them dead in the end. They were never meant to be apart, not even before they tied themselves together in veins and arteries, and now it's a miracle they aren't in their graves already.

She can feel his hearts - _her_ hearts, technically, but the exact ownership of both sets is so difficult to determine these days - pounding, and she wants them where they belong. Her fingers itch not for the trigger, but for the give of his bones and sinew. There's a desperate sheen to his eyes, a quiver to his clenched fists, a bite to his mouth that tells her he wants the same.

Well, if the end goal is for them to be dead either way, they might as well die satisfied. The Doctor lowers the bomb, and the Master looks so disappointed for a moment it would've been impossible to tell who was supposed to be pulling the trigger.

"For just a moment there," he sighs, pulling himself to his full height, "I thought _maybe._ "

She cuts him off. "I'm not letting you leave. Just not killing you with this."

That sets the hunger in his eyes alight again, and he tilts his head. Bending down, she sets the bomb on the floor, then steps closer. Watching carefully, she can see the exact moment the pieces click into place for him, and he presses one hand above his left heart, the one that had been hers not all that long ago.

"They really did a number on us, didn't they?" he whispers. Then a wistful smile. "You shouldn't have said yes."

"You shouldn't have suggested it," she replies.

He laughs. "Yes, I suppose so. Would you like to go first, love? You've been aching for it ever since we met, I could tell."

The pet name and the condescending tone should make her bristle, but she's already so keyed up and ready to _hurt him_ that it barely registers. A tight, carefully controlled nod serves as her reply, because she doesn't trust her mouth to not just produce a growl right now. The Master steps that little bit nearer and removes the distance between them, one hand landing on her waist and the other in her hair as he kisses her. It's a sharp, cruel thing, more teeth than anything else, but it doesn't last nearly long enough before he's pulling back.

Watching the Master sink to his knees, then lay flat on his back for her, sends a thrill down her spine. He peels away layers of fabric, baring his chest. She kneels at his side - his left, of course - and digs her fingers into his skin, tearing and pulling. He stays silent, but she can feel him tense. It must be painful, and a part of her wishes she had something better to cut with if only for efficiency's sake, but it's not as though she has many alternatives.

Blood wells up around her fingers as she digs deeper, and if she could hear anything over the pounding of their hearts in her ears she would probably hear a horrified gasp behind her as Ko Sharmus enters the room. Soon after, he leaves again, and neither of them hear the sounds of retching just beyond the doorway.

After entirely too long, she finally hits his ribs, and she's so close to what she needs that she can almost taste it - she could lick her fingers, if she wanted to, but the blood on them is cooling rapidly in the chill of the Panopticon, and it would be horribly unsanitary. There's no good way to go about breaking someone's ribs, she muses as she digs her fingers into the gaps between bones. And they really are quite sturdy. Still, one quick, sharp _yank_ is enough to fracture the one in her grasp, and this time the Master's gasp of pain is loud enough for her to hear.

"No backing out now," she reminds him, cruelly tugging the two halves of his broken rib apart from each other to clear up a little space.

"Oh, I know," he hisses through gritted teeth. "Wasn't planning to, love."

"Good," she says, and breaks another rib.

Two should be enough to let her get to ~~his~~ her heart, she thinks. Probing fingers shove just a little deeper, and she goes lightheaded with relief when she presses against pulsing, trembling muscle. The fog in her brains clears slightly for the first time since she regenerated with the wrong set of hearts. Part of her wants to claw it out of his chest right then and there, but her more rational side points out that she'll have nowhere to put it if she does that.

"Do you think you can do mine, or should I?" she asks, looking down at the Master and the bloody, gaping wound in his chest.

"I can manage," he insists.

The Doctor doesn't exactly relish the thought of tearing her own chest open, so she decides to at least let him try. She lays back on the floor after carefully removing her clothing - bloodstains are a pain to get out of fabric - and waits. The Master pulls himself up onto his knees, blood trailing down his skin and jagged bone protruding slightly from the seeping mess. His hands tremble a little when he first touches her, but she quickly stops noticing that as he rips into her skin.

Pain floods her mind, but she bites back the agonized groan building in her throat. If the Master could keep mostly quiet the whole time, then she can too. It takes a little work, but she manages to force her mind to focus on other things as he pulls apart layers of flesh. What she'll say to her companions if she survives this. She might, though chances are slim. After all, the Master had been convinced that she was an immortal creature from beyond this dimension, so perhaps she'll make it out of this alive. If she does, though, she'll have to keep the Master alive as well; she won't have any more hearts to give if he regenerates out of sync with her, and the thought of him stealing a new body is unacceptable.

The feeling of having her ribs broken is enough to scatter that conviction, the lightning-sharp pain hitting her mind like a truck. This time, she can't hold back a wounded noise.

"No backing out now," the Master singsongs. His eyes are soft when he looks down at her. "And don't worry, love, we're almost done."

That's all the warning she gets before he breaks the second rib, and then feels his fingers press against his heart in her chest. She can see awe and adoration flit across his face, and she can only imagine she must have looked much the same when she felt her other heart nestled among his broken bones.

She pushes herself up until she's sitting, face nearly level with his. "How're we doing this? Do we both just take ours and pull?"

"I suppose. Haven't exactly done this before," he says.

The Doctor settles her right hand onto _her_ heart, while the Master's fingers curl around his own. This will probably kill them both, in as close to simultaneous destruction as they can manage organically. The thought doesn't scare her, though. Living any longer without the heart that is meant to be hers - that scares her. A slow, painful death by separation is far worse than bleeding out together in the ruins of Gallifrey.

"Three," she counts.

"Two."

Neither of them get to "one" before they both _tear._ And it comes so easily, really; snapping arteries and connective tissue like twigs beneath the force of their need. A pair of blood-stained hands emerge from the opposite chest, each holding a trembling mass of muscle like a trophy, like it will save them. Then each heart is plunged into the proper chest, the one it should have gone to had regeneration taken past actions into consideration beyond their personalities.

The Doctor's vision goes golden at the edges as she forces her second heart into place, and she snarls. She is not going to regenerate after having _finally_ fixed what went wrong with this body. Focusing, she forces the energy into the wound in her chest alone, connecting veins to the places they ought to go, knitting broken bones back together so that her new heart will be safe, replacing torn skin with new flesh.

Across from her, the Master does much the same. They collapse into each other, his arms around her and her head on his shoulder. The air around them is golden with the evidence of their correction of a universal misstep.

For an eternal, silent moment, they don't speak, the only sound the beating of their hearts. Eventually, one of them will break the quiet and they will have to figure out their path forward. Eventually, they will die again, and this pain will repeat anew, an endless echo of foolish dedication and obsession. Their story is still a tragedy, but it is one they will make themselves survive.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, leave a kudos and a comment!


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